Edit: Huh. It seems editing a post republishes it. All I've changed, if you've seen this before, is update the photos of the Lord Celestant (after fixing his hammer) and the Liberators (after painting their shields properly).

Hello world!

This is my first blog post at TGA, and hopefully the first of many. My overall aim here is really just to share my Age of Sigmar armies as they are and how they grow, alongside a bit of home grown fluff and some commentary. There's going to be a decent amount of photos, but a warning in advance - these are my first armies after returning to the hobby from a 10 year hiatus, and back when I quit I leaned more towards the gaming side of the hobby than painting. Nowadays, I like them both fine (and like conversions and kitbashing a little more), but my focus is pretty much 100% tabletop standard. I hate gaming with unpainted plastic, but there's a lot of minis to get through to get two 2000 point armies up to scratch. I'm expecting more than a few 'thin your paints' comments, and you can expect a lot of "I'd like to go back when I'm finished and work on these guys a little more" comments to crop up from myself. Photographing your stuff and looking at it when writing something like this means I'm seeing a lot of imperfections I missed when painting.

The format here will basically be a show and tell, with fluff interspersed where I have it in quote blocks. It's my hope to have a bit of character behind all of my heroes, and maybe my unit Primes as I go along. I'll probably alternate blog posts between my two armies The Azure Tempest and The Wolf and the Rat, with big posts at the start, and little ones with new units as I paint them or come up with fluff to add.

Without further adeui, here is my first 1500pts of 'The Azure Tempest', my homebrew Stormhost from the later strikings.

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"My brothers, let us remind the forces of Chaos just who it is that would yet stand against them." Cazris proclaimed to his retinue, behind his draconic death mask. "Let us crash upon them like the waves of the Great Ocean! May our arrows wash over them like the storm in the heart of a violent tempest! Tonight, the enemy will know once again the true name of immortality. They will once again fear the Asur of Ulthuan!"

It is said of the Age of Myth that gods Tyrion and Malerion could not find any Aelf outside of Azyrheim, but in their dreams they could hear the anguished cries of damned Aelves devoured by Slaanesh. The Chaos God was left bloated and helpless by the souls he devoured during the End Times, so it hid hoping to digest his meal. Tyrion and Malerion captured Slaanesh, managed to free a great number of tortured souls. Among them were a great number so corrupted by their anguished that they could not neither find rest, nor regain their physical form.

There are conflicting reports of who it was to have approached Sigmar first, with some claims of the wisdom of Teclis, and others suggesting Malerion proposed the idea as a means to make amends for disobeying the orders of Sigmar in the capturing of Slaanesh. In any case, the result was the same - Sigmar agreed to reforge the anguished souls of the Aelves in his own forges in return for their fealty in the war against Chaos; a term that the vengeful souls who had so long suffered the whims of Slaanesh would gladly agree to. Thus, the souls were given corporeal form as Stormcast Eternals of The Azure Tempest.

 

As my first army coming back from a decade long hiatus, I originally didn't want to stray too far from the established Hammers of Sigmar scheme, as that was the scheme I had painted my Knight Questor from the Silver Tower box set that brought me back into the hobby. As I built more of my minis though, I started to obsess over the idea of my own Stormhost and it's accompanying fluff. I'd recently bought my fiancé a High Elf Dragoonlord and a box of Dragon Princes, and had a bunch of leftover bitz from that which inspired this idea of Stormcast from non-human origins, and pulling in a bit of their former personalities into the corresponding units in the Stormcast army. One of the biggest draws of Age of Sigmar to me - as someone who had originally scoffed at the notion when I heard they were scrapping the Old World - is it's massive nine realm setting and the huge blind spots in the fluff that leave a lot more room for individual creativity. To that end, I felt like I was missing a trick not giving my armies their own unique flavour. Obviously, making my guys from Aelves posed a few challenges, given that it hasn't been heard of in any official fluff yet. I'd have to explain why Sigmar is reforging those not necessarily of his own kind. I'd need to have a reason for non-humans swearing fealty to some human deity. I've never particularly worried about the Human keyword though - all Stormcast are reforged with those superhuman Stormcast bodies, so even if my guys were Aelves, I'm happy enough to consider their reforged bodies as having more in common with human now. And as for the actual official line on whether this is possible? Well, Josh Reynolds said something to that effect in a Q&A.

For a colour scheme, I decided to do a subtle twist on the Blue/Gold of the Hammers of Sigmar. I wanted to make the blue a little more of a sea-blue, and introduce some white in there for a classic High Elves kind of look. I've given most things a blue accent, with glossy white shoulders. The gold I've dialled down a little to a bit more of a bronze, and everything has had a watered down wash of Nikalah Oxide on the metal (and then drybrushed over again to clean it up a bit) to give them a more ancient kind of look - The Azure Tempest are a little sentimental, and employ a lot of relics and imagery from their Aelven heritage and especially the Old World, and so I wanted the whole army to kind of look a bit like relics themselves - having come pretty much straight from End Times in the World That Was to getting digested by Slaanesh, and straight to getting reforged as Stormcast.

One more little contrast I did on these guys was the bases. You can see the tiles that I normally game on being used as a display board for all the photographs here - which I made using Secret Weapon Tablescapes Rolling Fields, but painted like an ash wastes with a river of lava flowing through it. It's also got some various tones of dead or scorched flock or static grass, and my Chaos army are based similarly. As I designed and built my Order and Chaos army to largely face each other on this table, for my Stormcasts, I opted to contrast all of that with bright green static grass, and flower bed tufts, to project a sort of life bringing glow to the army, which I really liked.

I've rambled long enough. Here's the miniatures...

Lord Celestant 'Prince' Cazris

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A former Dragonlord of Caledor, experienced warrior and gifted diplomat, though proud and boastful. It is rumoured among those closest to him that it was Cazris who had brokered the terms of the Stormhosts reforging with Sigmar himself. Cazris has shown great affinity for the children of Dracothian and has forged close bonds with his two Extremis mounts, the Dracoth Glauraon and Stardrake Chaeronax. His brash demeanour, coupled with widespread usage of Aelven artifacts and iconography within his Stormhost has led to his reputation for pretentiousness among other Lord Celestants, earning him his satirical nickname 'Prince' Cazris.

This was the model that started my Aelven conversions theme on the army, and sort of established the pattern of mapping units to old High Elf units (Extremis > Caledor, Decimators > White Lions, etc). I really like   how the hammer from the previous helmet fits so nicely between the dragon mask wings. I also really like how natural the addition of the shield (leftover from my Stardrake kit) looks. (EDIT: Original pic had wonky Tempestos Hammer from a breakage fix. I've since fixed this and replaced the photo. Bonus: I've kinda figured out how to use this light box now..)

Lord Relictor, Tallaran Dreadhammer

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As is often the case of Sigmar's guardians of lost souls, the origins of Tallaran Dreadhammer are shrouded in mystery. It is generally agreed that Tallaran was once a Druchii of Naggaroth, though conflicting reports claim he was either a practictioner of Necromancy, whilst other claim he was a nimble Assassin, whose proficiency with concealed weapons and close proximity to death led to his somewhat ironic role in The Azure Tempest, safeguarding the souls of the fallen from the clutch of Nagash while bearing a heavy reliquary staff.

No conversions or anything exciting here, but I think Dreadhammer is one of my better paint jobs, particularly the highlighting on the tabbard which is usually crisp and clean for me (most of my other jobs look a little more blotchy with thick lines), so I'm actually rather fond of him as is. I'm tempted to do a head swap with a Dark Elf Witch Elves death mask sometime.

Drakesworn Templar, Aemarion Dragonborn

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Former Dragon Prince and Drakesworn Templar of the Azure Tempest Extremis Chamber. His hot temper and impetuousness is matched only by the respect he commands from the children of Dracothian. Unsuitable for a leadership role, Aemarion is the sword arm of Cazris, often seen riding into battle upon Cazris' personal Stardrake, Charrofax.

Man, I love the Stardrake mini. Pretty much the moment I picked up the AoS starter box I decided I had to get me one of those. For my own standards, I'm really happy with how his paint job came out. The rider definitely needs work, and I could probably do with highlighting on the red armour belts, but the plate and the shoulders, and the High Elf Lord on Dragon basing extras all worked out really nicely. It's also the first mini I've magnetised - the torso of the Templar is magnetised and switchable with the Lord Celestant, along with the bow/cover facing for when the bows not attached. While the Lord Celestant has a similar Dragon Prince style head as his Dracoth mounted incarnation, I thought the Drakesworn Templar would benefit from the Dragonlord Head, which distinguished him a little bit and gave him some individual personality considering he has no other form than Stardrake-mounted.

Liberators 1

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The foot soldiers which make up the backbone of the Azure Tempest Warrior Chamber come from the most stalwart and unmovable warriors from all across Ulthuan and Athel Loren in the World That Was. Favouring the finesse of Aelven craft short swords over the bulky warhammers wielded by the majority of Liberators across most Stormhosts, they are employed primarily to hold the line and capture strategic points.

Headswaps galore! My bare heads I ordered from various bitz sites and they're from a bunch of different Aelves - Wood Elves, White Lions, there's even a couple Eldar Guardians heads in there.

I know the Hammers are statistically just better than the Swords from a gaming standpoint, but I really felt like these swords fit the Aelven aesthetic a little better. And I love how the smaller Aelven swords give them a roman Short Sword and Tower Shield kinda vibe.

Edit: The lightning on the shields is a little uneven and thick. Unfortunately this was due to the gloss varnish going on before I really cared how washed out the hammer icon was at the time - these were my first dudes painted from the starter set and I had a bit of trouble with brush control still, and the varnish is a kinda difficult surface to paint over. I might again go back and clean them up at a later date, but it's an improvement to not seeing them at all.

Liberators 2

More headswaps! I made a little slip up here in that I somehow managed to put my duplicate Eldar Guardian head on the exact same body as the guy from the other squad. That's.. annoyed me ever since. Also, the Prime just has the same sword as everyone else, which is dull, but I couldn't find another one of those Dragonlord swords. This was the second unit I painted, and I think I rushed them a bit so I could start playing. I'm not super happy with either squad when I look closely at them.

Judicators

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Expert marksmen and skilled combatants, the Judicators of the Azure Tempest are as likely to have origins as Seaguard of Lothern as they are to have been Archers of Athel Loren. These Judicators forgo the bulky death mask helmets of their contemporaries in favour of the uncompromised vision of a hooded cowl.

Decimators

Another case of 'I think the standard hammers would've been more useful, but the weapon swaps fit the fluff better.' These guys are my White Lions of Chrace. Green stuff lion pelts and red ribbons. I sort of originally did this because I got the starter box, and another 'Easy to Build' pack of two, doubling me up on the primes. I did my best to distinguish them - the prime has a full lion pelt on his back including legs and tail and has a bigger axe. I also chopped the excess ribbon off the other prime and put it on him. I also cut the other prime off his little rock on his front foot so he didn't stand quite as tall, and cut down the spikes on his backpack to be more like the rest. Finally, the lion mouldings on the prime had to go, so I green stuffed over the other primes hand with a more standard looking bit of armour. You can see it on him in the back right - it's not great but it's close enough for me. I wish I hadn't started green stuffing his right shoulder first though - having two shoulders with lion furs makes him look overly clunky. I dunno. The new Stormcast Battletome also shows me that Decimators are supposed to have slightly different helmets, which is a bit of an irksome detail to now be aware of. For tabletop though, I like these guys fine.

Prosecutors
Just some Prosecutors. Cool minis, but I did nothing special with them. The wings I did with a Nikhalah Oxide wash like on the armour, so they kinda matched colour scheme wise. I like how they turned out, all things considered. I'll field them because I have them and they look cool, but I do wish they had javelins instead, which would've better fit my armies theme and they'd be a little more useful.

What's next?

My next blog post will introduce my first batch of my Chaos army, The Wolf and the Rat, of which my first 1500pts is just about fully painted now. Beyond that, I'll be making individual posts for the final additions to the armies, including a big ol' Celestant Prime conversion to round out The Azure Tempest.

See you next time!